Tiger Woods is about to let you down again. Not necessarily on the golf course, mind you—but in the realm of inspiring redemption narratives.

If he'd been thinking cinematically, the disgraced golf legend could have clawed back to the top of the sport with the intervention of a Rasputin-like swing guru (his new coach, Sean Foley, for instance) or from the calming influence of a flaxen-haired athletic muse and true love (maybe his new girlfriend, the skier Lindsey Vonn).

But the humdrum truth of the matter is that Tiger Woods has won three tournaments this year and reclaimed the top spot in the World Golf Rankings for a pretty pedestrian reason: He's been sinking more putts.

ENLARGE

Woods after missing a putt at the 2012 Masters.
Reuters

This season, Woods has hit 67% of greens in regulation, which is about flat with 67.6% last year. His average drive has travelled 295 yards in 2013 compared with 297.4 last year. He's hit 54.9% of fairways this season (No. 144 on the PGA Tour) compared with 63.1% last season (he was No. 66). His approach shots are landing on average 34 feet, eight inches from the hole this season compared with 33 feet, six inches last time around.

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But when Woods pulls his putter out of his bag, he morphs into George Archer or Ben Crenshaw—two of the greatest putters of all time. He's averaging 8.19 one-putts per round, compared with 7.2 last season, moving his ranking from 38th to 11th in that category. He has one-putted 131 holes this season through 17 rounds with an average distance of seven feet, 10 inches. And in the all-important metric of strokes gained through putting, which measures a player's proficiency at various distances compared to his competitors, Woods is the best on the PGA Tour, gaining 1.476 strokes on the field each round. Last year he was No. 35 in this category, gaining just .33 strokes per round.

"Most people don't look at the numbers," said Hank Haney, Woods's former coach, who now coaches swimmer Michael Phelps on the Golf Channel's "The Haney Project." But "that's what the numbers say. Tiger Woods is an unbelievably talented golfer. If he putts well, it's game over."

Putting is golf's darkest art, a skill that confounds and mystifies. It requires a combination of acuity with physics, topography and touch that's rare in sports. "It's not difficult, but it's very complex," said Dave Pelz, the former aerospace engineer turned short-game guru. "You can do five or six things right, but if you do one thing wrong you miss."

Golfers can win if they're inconsistent off the tee or from the fairway. Whack a tee shot into the gorse or an approach into the sand and there's still a chance to recover. But it's nearly impossible to win a tournament with a wandering putter, as a missed putt always costs the golfer a stroke.

Woods's agent, Mark Steinberg, chalked his client's improved putting up to the fact that he's finally comfortable with his new swing. Steinberg said Woods spent so many hours rehabbing his injured knee and trying to adjust to the stronger grip his new swing requires—he keeps his arms closer to his body and shifts his weight to his left when club meets ball—that he didn't have much time to practice putts. "Changing a golf swing requires a crazy amount of repetitions," Steinberg said. When Woods got healthy, he added, "he got his swing grooved and that allowed him to focus again on his short game."

Woods also benefitted from a lesson with fellow golfer Steve Stricker, on the practice green at the Doral Resort and Spa last month before the WGC Cadillac Championship. Stricker, one of the game's best putters, told Woods to keep his hands more in line with the ball. Woods then averaged just 25 putts per round and won the tournament.

That chat, and the extra putting practice, should continue to pay dividends this week at the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, where Woods is poised to resume his quest for a 15th major championship (18 will tie Jack Nicklaus's record).

Steinberg and others who have watched Woods say his putting stroke hasn't changed. It still has the same slight arc he developed with his dad when he was a toddler. Haney said when Woods works on his swing he focuses on new adjustments. When he works on putting, it's about getting back to what he has always done.

Unlike most shots, in which the golfer largely controls the flight of the ball through the air, a putt's terrestrial trajectory can be altered by a lot more variables—the speed of the green, the contours of the earth, a spike mark, or any little object that might be in the ball's path.

As a result, putting successfully is more about having a consistent stroke that makes the ball behave reliably no matter what bizarre impediments the golf Gods throw up.

"When pros aren't putting well they're trying to force the ball into the hole instead of rolling the ball down their line and letting the hole catch it," said Kevin Weeks, another notable short-game guru.

For many golfers, reading a putting green is one of the weakest parts of their game. Pelz has tested this with a machine that shows the pros usually misjudge the line and speed needed to put a ball in the hole. Lack of practice exacerbates the mistakes because players lose the touch that comes with a perfectly repeatable stroke.

"With Tiger, after his bad year he started with a new teacher and then he spent 95% of his time on his new swing and not with his putter," Pelz said. "Do that and you start to lose your feel and your speed and once that goes you start losing your lines because you're questioning your reads. Then you're in big trouble."

It's worth mentioning that Woods's putter has had a little help. He's undoubtedly better from the rough this season, where his shots are landing 43 feet, four inches from the hole, compared with 48 feet, seven inches last season. But he's also had more practice from the rough, averaging 3.3 shots per round from the tall stuff compared with 2.4 swings per round from there last season.

In the end, tapping putts for hours may be the most boring form of practice in golf—and might seem far more tedious and ineffectual than a new love match or a seemingly sweet new swing that helps keep a balky knee healthy.

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